


better than you found it

by pensgame



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bakery AU, Jack is the only hockey player out of the group, M/M, Mutual Pining, Student Bakery AU, lots of pastries and feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 03:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8732581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensgame/pseuds/pensgame
Summary: “You know how Georgia’s policy is to always leave the kitchen better than you found it?” Bitty says, around a beer bottle that definitely doesn’t pair well with sugar cookies. “I want that to be my life philosophy.”
Jack laughs a little, because only Bitty could take Georgia’s words about cleaning and turn them into something meaningful. “I think that’s a nice way to think about it,” he tells Bitty.
Bitty surveys Jack with wide eyes. He’s a bit too close to Jack for this to be entirely comfortable, but Jack can’t bring himself to move away. 
“I want to leave the world better than I found it,” Bitty says, very solemnly and a little drunkenly. “People, too. I want to touch people- shut up laughing, Shitty- touch people’s lives, you know? Jack, you understand.” 
Jack falls a little in love with him when he says it.
Or: a university bakery AU.





	

It starts and ends with muffins.

“You must be Jack,” says a woman in a chef’s jacket the second Jack walks in the door. Her mere presence commands attention. She smiles at him, looking friendly enough, but Jack knows instantly that she is a woman whom he should not cross. “I’m Georgia, the executive pastry chef here,” she says, making her way over to him and extending her arm for a firm, slightly aggressive handshake.

Jack is a big guy, much bigger than Georgia is, so he’s not exactly threatened by her physical presence. Still, he’s smart enough to know power when he sees it. 

“Welcome to the bakery,” Georgia says, gesturing to the room behind her, which appears to have very limited walking space. It’s crammed with giant metal tubs labeled with ingredient names, several massive mixing bowls, and long metal tables that divide the room into color-coded sections.

A guy with an impressive mustache is standing at the nearest table, concentrating on spooning some kind of batter into muffin tins. He catches Jack’s gaze and gives him a friendly wave, which Jack returns, if a little awkwardly.

“Fresh meat!” the guy calls, and it’s unclear whether he’s referring to Jack or talking to himself about food. Either way, he looks busy, so Jack doesn’t bother responding as he follows Georgia through the room.

Georgia leads Jack to a desk, which is partitioned off from the rest of the room by a makeshift cubicle. She hands him a printed work schedule and a bright red employee handbook, which he studies briefly.

“Size?”

Jack turns to Georgia, not understanding. “What?”

She looks at him again, hands on her hips. “What size T-shirt?” 

“Extra large, I suppose.”

Georgia rummages through a box on the desk and tosses him a shirt. “There’s a bathroom around the corner, if you want to change.” She presents it as a smiling suggestion, but Jack knows when he’s being dismissed. He leaves to go change. 

When Jack returns to the bakery, he hears shouting coming from Georgia’s cubicle. He stops a few paces away, hesitant.

“It sounds like you didn’t thaw the pizza dough properly,” she’s saying into the phone, looking utterly exasperated. Her tone hasn’t risen, and she sounds calm enough, but Jack would hate to be on the other side of that phone call. “I’m not making another batch of 150,” she says, with finality, and then hangs up.

She sighs a little, and Jack almost feels like he’s intruding on a private moment, like she’s allowing herself a tiny second of rest before heading back into battle. He’s only known Georgia for ten minutes, but he gets the sense that she’s the kind of person who gets in a lot of battles. He lingers uncomfortably by the cubicle, unsure whether to approach or not, before Georgia  catches sight of Jack and gives him a wry smile.

“Everything okay?” he asks, tentative.

Georgia laughs. “General incompetence. You know we make all the bakery items for the dining hall upstairs, right?” She eyes the ceiling with distaste; the dining hall is almost directly overhead.

Jack nods.

“They can’t be bothered to do things right, so we have to make them over again. Chaos. Total chaos.” She shakes her head, then seems to snap out of it. “Anyway, I was going to take you on a tour. Follow me.”

It’s a bad habit of Jack’s to sort people into players and captains on and off the ice. Georgia is a captain if ever he’s seen one.

She leads him around the kitchen, explaining the various stations. There’s not enough standing room for them to make a full circle around the kitchen, so she stops halfway through the bakery to gesture around some more. “Muffins and scones are made over here with Shitty,” she says, waving at where the mustached guy is standing, now placing muffin cups into trays. “Cookies are in the corner, breads and pizza dough are next to it it, and pies and cobblers are in the back station with Bitty.”

Jack makes a noise that he hopes sounds like agreement, although he thinks he just heard Georgia call one of her employees Shitty.

“Follow me, please,” Georgia now says, walking back to the door of the bakery. Jack watches as she takes her chef’s coat and hairnet off, hanging the coat on a hook by the door and tossing the hairnet in a trash can on her way out.

“First rule,” she says, leading him down a long hallway, “no bakery clothes outside of the bakery. Aprons, jackets, anything. It’s unsanitary.”

Jack glances down at his gray T-shirt, which reads “Bakery” on it in big block letters.

Georgia catches him looking and amends her statement. “T-shirt is fine. You’ll wear an apron inside anyway.” She turns to the right, where the hallway branches off into a laundry room and a dark room that says “Cold Food Prep,” and opens the door to the dark room.

The room is dimly lit and smells unpleasant, like fish and onions mixed together. Jack wrinkles his nose but follows her until she stops at a metal box on the wall. 

“You’ll clock in and out here,” Georgia tells him. “We don’t have our own, so we have to come over to Cold Food. Enter code 11 and your student ID number and you’re set.”

Jack does as she says, and the box lights up green.

“Be glad you didn’t get assigned to Cold Food Prep,” she says to him, sending the room a disgusted look. “Making cookies and brownies for thousands of people is one thing. Imagine having to prepare their seafood.” She shudders.

The next room she shows him is the storeroom, which is a massive room that houses the dry ingredients for baking. Boxes and boxes of chocolate chips, cinnamon chips, and butterscotch chips are stacked in a pile that nearly reaches the ceiling. A few carts are scattered nearby, which Georgia tells him are used to transport ingredients to the bakery. Jack reads words like “lemon emulsion” and hopes he isn’t going to have to navigate the storeroom himself.

“We don’t buy cold ingredients in bulk,” Georgia tells him, when he asks about eggs and milk. “We get new ones each week, and they’re in our cooler.”

She doesn’t make small talk and Jack is wary of annoying her, so he tries to keep his questions to a bare minimum. She shows him where the dumpster is and teaches him how to use the recycling compactor, but otherwise doesn’t offer more information. They walk back to the bakery in silence.

“Do we listen to music while we bake?” asks Jack as they step through the doors. Georgia opens her mouth to answer before a loud laugh from Shitty cuts her off.

Shitty spins around from where he’s standing, holding a scoop full of batter. A few drops fall to the floor, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. He looks positively gleeful.

“Uh, did I say something-” starts Jack, confused, just as Shitty calls, “Bits, you owe me ice cream!”

A short, blonde man darts out from the back of the room, clutching a pie tin and ignoring Jack completely. He runs over to Shitty and high fives him, nearly dropping the pie in his excitement.

“Am I missing something?” Jack asks, turning to Georgia, who looks mildly amused.

“Every single new student we hire asks if we can play music,” she replies, striding over to grab a new hairnet. She slides on her jacket. “Every single one." 

“Bitty and I place bets on when they’ll say it,” Shitty explains. “We don’t play music, by the way.”

“Legally can’t,” says the blonde guy, turning to face Jack for the first time. He’s almost a foot shorter than Jack, and very, very cute. “Safety concerns, apparently.”

“God knows why,” say Shitty, with an affected sigh.

“We’ve been over this, guys,” Georgia says. “We can’t keep a radio clean. Everyone touches it- with their gloved hands- the second they hear a song they don’t like.” 

Shitty seems to accept this explanation, though he grumbles a little at Georgia before going back to his work. She just rolls her eyes, and Shitty starts to clean up the batter that’s now splattered all across the floor, singing a little under his breath. 

The man, still standing in the middle of the room, now eyes Jack with what appears to be professional interest. “Eric,” he says, extending his hand. 

Jack takes it, noting Eric’s firm handshake and how tiny his palms are. “I’m Jack,” he says, attempting a smile. It doesn’t seem to come out right. “Did they call you Bitty?”

Eric grins. His teeth are very white. “Nickname. You’ll probably get one too, if you stick around long enough.”

Jack processes this. “And uh, is that guy’s name really Shitty?”

Shitty turns back around at the mention of his name, abandoning his muffins again in his excitement to join the conversation. Jack likes him immediately. “Sure is,” he says. “No inquisition, please.” 

This seems like a fair enough request, so Jack obeys and doesn’t ask any more questions, though his mind is teeming with them.

“First time here?” asks Eric- Bitty, resting back on his heels. He has to look up to make eye contact with Jack, and Jack is a little charmed by the motion.

“First job, actually,” Jack replies. “Credit thing, you know. It’s for a class.”

Bitty says something under his breath that sounds like, “It always is.”

Shitty rolls his eyes at Bitty. “Ignore him. He’s just pissed because everyone started working here for credits and not for an overwhelming love of pastry or some shit.”

“I am not a pastry snob, for the last time,” Bitty says, but he’s smiling. “And anyway, Shitty, you’re here because of a class, aren’t you?”

Shitty nods. “Econ 101. Gen Ed requirement. Sucked ass.”

“You took it?” Jack asks.

Shitty groans and makes some expansive gesture that Jack doesn’t understand, though it probably indicates assent. “I took it last year. Only class where I’ve ever seriously considered punching a TA.” 

Jack isn’t sure if he’s joking or not, so he just laughs and hopes that was the right reaction.

Shitty eyes him sympathetically. “Don’t let Econ suck the life out of you. That’s one of the worst classes I’ve ever had the misfortune to take.” He looks at Bitty, then adds, “Bitty, don’t you give me that look.”

Bitty looks mildly affronted. “You’re still here, though, so it can’t have been too bad.”

“Couldn’t resist your company,” Shitty says, and Jack suddenly realizes that they’re chirping each other just like teammates do. Social interactions are easier when Jack can put them in hockey terms.

“Anyway,” says Bitty, turning to look up at Jack. “Econ, huh? Is that your major?”

 Jack shakes his head. “History.”

Shitty makes an appreciative noise. “Neat, dude. How many years you got left?”

“This is my last one. Last Gen Ed class, too, actually." 

“Then what?” asks Shitty, as though it’s perfectly normal to start grilling someone about their life plan mere minutes after meeting them for the first time. Maybe it is normal to him, though: Jack probably has a different definition of normal from most people.

“Well, I play hockey, so-”

“So you’ll become the next Sidney Crosby,” says Bitty.

Jack is momentarily a little surprised that Bitty knows hockey, but recovers quickly.

“There’s only one Sidney Crosby,” he says, and Bitty and Shitty both laugh, though Jack hadn’t meant it to be funny.

“Well, as fun as this chat has been, these muffins won’t scoop themselves,” Shitty says, turning back to his muffins. “Nice to meet you, Jack.”

“Welcome to the working class,” Bitty says, patting Jack on the shoulder before returning to the back of the room with his pie tin. Jack stares a little blankly at Bitty’s retreating form, a little intrigued. There's something about Bitty that makes Jack want to know him better. Jack isn't sure if that's a good thing or not. 

Georgia grabs Jack by the shoulder, making him jump. “Let’s put you to work, boy,” she says, a little grimly. “Go help Shitty with those muffins. I’ve got to run upstairs and haggle with the dining hall director a bit more.”

“God save his soul,” says Shitty solemnly from where he's standing, spooning batter into a muffin cup. 

Georgia laughs, then addresses her next sentence to Shitty and Jack both: “Try to finish up before I get back.”

Shitty turns around to salute her as she leaves, and even though Jack is positive that the gesture is a joke, he has to resist following suit. Georgia really is something.

Shitty turns out to be a good teacher, if a bit more enthusiastic than Jack is used to. A massive tub of batter and numerous stacks of muffin cups sit on top of his work station, which is neat and tidy now that’s he’s mopped up the spilled batter. 

He hands Jack a bright yellow slip of paper with an ingredient list and instructions on it, as well as a pair of gloves, an apron, and a hairnet. He feels slightly ridiculous in the hairnet.

They’re making 40 dozen apple spice muffins, which seems like an unbelievably high number to Jack. He tells Shitty this.

“Luckily, you’ve missed the hard part,” Shitty says, flashing him a bright grin. “Already mixed the batter. Now we just use a 24 scoop on this, since it’s a catering muffin.”

“24 scoop? Catering muffin?"

Shitty points to a chart on the wall, which displays color coded scoops, their numbers, and their uses. Similar charts are posted all over the kitchen. “Chart for scoop size. Catering muffins are bigger than regular dining hall muffins, but you'll get the hang of it. Then you find the scoop in one of the hanging organizers. This shit is real organized, thanks to Bits and his newfound appreciation for IKEA.”

Jack isn’t exactly sure what any of this means but he takes it in stride; this seems to be the best strategy for dealing with Shitty.

“So I take a 24 scoop, since it’s a catering muffin,” Jack says obediently. At Shitty’s encouraging nod, Jack seizes a scoop and attempts the first muffin. Shitty, standing slightly to the side, watches amusedly as Jack unsuccessfully attempts to spoon the batter into a muffin cup. 

“It’s easier if you use the scoop the way it’s intended to be used,” Shitty says, not unkindly. He demonstrates, pushing a button on the side as he goes about it. 

Jack soon learns that working in a bakery takes fine motor skills that he simply does not have. While Shitty’s muffin cups are neatly filled with batter, Jack’s leave a lot to be desired. He’s managed to get batter on his shoes, forearms, and apron, as well as all around their work station. To his credit, Shitty says nothing, only correcting him when he makes mistakes and approaching the whole thing with a cheerfulness that Jack finds infectious.

The 40 dozen muffins go by more quickly than expected. After they’re done with each muffin pan, they slide them onto a tall cart. Jack eventually finds a rhythm and they complete the order with only a little batter left in the bottom of the plastic tub. Shitty sneaks a finger in the batter and tastes it, his eyes fluttering closed in satisfaction. 

“These are going to be fucking incredible,” he tells Jack confidently. “Bitty’s recipe, so you know they're good. The catering people are lucky fuckers.”

“Do we bake them?”

Shitty laughs again, warm and kind. “No,” he tells Jack, “we just prep them. The supervisors bake them.”

Jack nods, not completely understanding, which just seems to be the theme for the day.

“They’ll bake these ones tomorrow during the early shift so they’re fresh for breakfast,” Shitty explains. “We just put them in the cooler and leave them until the supervisors come in.”

Jack nods again.

“Speaking of the cooler, do you mind taking the carts and dropping them off in there?” Shitty asks, slipping off his apron and tossing it in a bin by the door. “I’m late for class. And cross it off the chart when you’re done, too, if you get a chance?” Before Jack has a chance to respond, Shitty waves at him and steps out the door.

Jack gapes at Shitty’s retreating form, completely lost. He glances around, looking for a cooler big enough to store an entire cart of muffins. There doesn’t even appear to be so much as a mini fridge.

Jack wanders around the bakery aimlessly for a few moments before Bitty takes pity on him and appears at his side, smelling like butterscotch. “Cooler’s in the back,” Bitty says, grabbing the cart and leading Jack through a small door he hadn’t spotted. They enter into another room, which houses more trays and muffin tins. In the back, there are two giant doors, one labeled _Freezer_ and the other _Cooler_ in a spiky scrawl. 

“It’s a bit of a pain, having to come all the way back here,” Bitty says, “but it’s necessary since we make so much food.” 

Jack nods, looking at the sheer size of the cooler. He’d somehow been expecting a typical fridge, which now seems ridiculous, since he and Shitty just made 40 dozen muffins. Instead, the cooler is its own room with metal walls and a massive, heavy-looking door. 

“Careful,” Bitty tells him, as Jack pops his head in the door and looks around. “The door sticks, and you don’t want to get locked in there.” 

Jack jumps back, startled, and shuts the door. “I just slide the cart in there?” he asks Bitty.

“You’ll need to cover it first, then stick a label on it,” Bitty says, gesturing to Jack’s left, where a large box sits, full of clear plastic. “I’m too short to put these on without help,” he says, smiling faintly. “Do you mind?” 

Once the cart is taken care of, the two return to the bakery, where Bitty shows Jack a chart on the wall with the day’s orders. 

“See, you just finished off the muffins,” says Bitty, drawing a black line on the sheet through _catering - apple spice muffins - 40 dz_ , “so you’ll mark it off.”

He takes Jack through the other things he needs to know, like how to use the dishwasher and, disturbingly, what to do if he sees a cockroach. Apparently the protocol is to sweep the offending creature up and dispose of it in the trash can. 

“So as not to kill it,” Bitty says calmly. “You know, the crunching noise is kind of gross, and then you have to clean it up.”

Jack’ face must blanch a little at his words, because Bitty hastily adds, “Not that we’ve seen a cockroach in a long time. But, you know, sometimes they come up through the drains, so I’m just preparing you in the event you see one. If you see one, you’ll sweep it up. Easy as pie.”

Bitty is really alarmingly calm about this, Jack thinks.

“If I see one,” Jack repeats, trying and probably failing to repress a tiny shiver, “I’ll sweep it up.” 

Bitty chuckles. The sound is warm and pleasant. Jack thinks he could do with hearing it more often. “The bakery’s really not as intimidating as you might think.”

Still thinking of cockroaches, Jack shakes his head.

“Just stay on Georgia’s good side and try not to fuck up too much,” says Bitty cheerfully, returning to his work station.

Georgia comes back to the bakery shortly after, looking furious. From the bits and pieces of conversation Jack overhears, he gathers that her conversation with the dining hall upstairs didn’t go very well. He doesn’t ask, and he obediently trots over to the corner when she assigns him to the dishwasher until the end of his shift. 

This helps to calm Jack’ nerves, especially after Bitty’s somewhat ominous advice. There’s no way he can fuck up dishwashing.

After just a few minutes on the job, Jack learns this is very, very untrue. The water sprays everywhere, drenching him in water and batter from the dishes. Unlike a normal sink, Jack has to hold onto the sprayer with one hand while maneuvering the dishes with his other. The dishwasher, he’s been informed, is very old and obstreperous. When he starts the first load, it turns off mid-cycle and he’s forced to go ask Georgia for help.

Jack makes it through to the end of his shift with only one major mistake: somehow, he’s baked cake batter residue onto a bunch of pans by forgetting to rinse them thoroughly. After he apologizes profusely to an unsmiling Georgia, he clocks out, completely covered in cake batter and water.

His next shifts are not easier. It strikes Jack now to be a very stupid idea, taking on a new job and expecting to be good at it immediately. There’s no competition in baking, not really, but Jack still feels like he’s losing.

He’s constantly making mistakes. He regularly forgets parchment paper when baking cookies and is forced to remake more than one batch after pulling them out of the oven to discover that they’ve glued themselves to the pan. On one particularly brutal morning shift, he swaps gluten-free flour for wheat and ends up on the receiving end of a polite lecture from Georgia. She doesn’t yell at him, doesn’t even raise her voice, but her no-nonsense manner is somehow worse.

Jack tries to remind himself before every shift that there’s no shame in being bad at something, that he’s still learning and it’s okay to make mistakes, but it’s more than a little overwhelming. 

The first few days of Jack’s new job, he partners with Shitty, who puts his anxiety to rest. Shitty doesn’t seem to mind that Jack prefers listening to talking; in fact, he seems to love it. The shifts when Jack works with Shitty are filled with political rants, stories about Shitty’s friends told in affectionate tones, and the occasional hockey discussion. Shitty practically lights up the room with his ridiculous tales, gesturing wildly all the while while still gently ensuring that Jack doesn’t screw up the baking too much. 

“I have no idea how you don’t make a mess,” Jack says to him, after Shitty tells him a spectacular story that builds to a dramatic conclusion, filled with dramatic hand waving that nearly knocks over an open bottle of vanilla extract.

Shitty shrugs. His shrugs somehow seem to take up more space than anyone else’s. “Good hand-eye coordination or some shit. Bits always says that I'm not clumsy, just careless. Hey, speaking of clumsy, have you met Nursey yet?”

Jack hasn’t, so he shakes his head.

He meets Nursey on his next shift, when he, Shitty, and Nursey are all partnered together to make an absurd number of football-shaped cookies for the dining halls.

“I hate game day,” sighs Nursey, giving the recipe a pained look. It reads _dining hall - sugar cookies - 125 dz_ , and Jack knows enough about the bakery now to know that that’s a lot of cookies.

“Sugar cookies,” says Shitty, managing to make it sound like a curse. He and Nursey both already look defeated. “Fuck sugar cookies.”

"Sugar cookies are the bane of my existence," Nursey says, with another loud sigh. 

“I haven’t made sugar cookies before,” Jack says, thinking it best to get the truth out in the open now, just in case they expect him to know what he’s doing.

Nursey laughs a little. “Lucky you.” He moves to shake Jack’s hand, but drops his extended arm quickly once he notices that Jack is already wearing gloves. “You’re Jack, aren’t you? The guy Bitty was telling me about?”

Jack has a lot of questions about this, but doesn’t ask. “Yeah,” he says instead. “You’re Nursey, right?”

Nursey makes an affirmative noise as he goes to grab gloves, pulling them on with reckless abandon. Jack didn’t think it was possible to put on disposable gloves with reckless abandon, but Nursey manages it.

“Nursey here is the best at decorating sugar cookies,” Shitty says, sounding like a proud parent. He snickers a little. “He knows the secret.”

“The secret?” Jack asks.

“Throw enough sprinkles on something and it’ll become edible, even if it wasn’t in the first place,” Nursey says sagely.

Shitty gives this bit of advice a solemn nod, then bursts into raucous laughter. A second later, Nursey joins him, cackling.

“It’s an inside joke,” Shitty tells Jack, once the peals of laughter have ceased. “Nursey once burned an entire batch of cookies- we’re talking about 50 dozen- because he forgot to set a time. But did he despair? No! He managed to pass them off as decent by frosting all of them and dumping a tub of sprinkles on them.” Shitty laughs again, which causes Nursey to follow suit. They spend the next minute or two chuckling softly.   

Jack isn’t sure he understands their humor here, but he’s learning.

Some of this must show on his face because Nursey says, “Inside jokes are a big thing here. It’s dumb, but whatever. Looking forward to including you in some of them.”

Since Jack doesn't know how to respond to this, he asks, "Are these sugar cookies Bitty's recipe?"

Shitty's eyes widen. "Fuck, no. And don't mention sugar cookies around Bitty. He hates them."

"He hates cookies?" Jack asks, bewildered.

Nursey shakes his head. "He hates the sugar cookies we make here. We have to put them through the machine since we make so many of them, which means we need to use a hell of a lot of corn syrup."

"Is that bad?" Jack asks.

Shitty does something complicated with his shoulders. "Bitty doesn't like it." 

Jack accepts this, stowing it away in the short list of facts he knows about Bitty. Bitty's real name is Eric, he's very good at baking, and he doesn't like simple sugar cookies. Jack isn't quite sure why he's compiling a list, but it feels important, somehow.

The rest of Jack’s shift is spent mixing cookie dough and learning how to use the cookie machine, which seems ominous and turns out to be as bad as it sounds.

“You can’t let the machine sense your fear,” Shitty says seriously, turning one of the dials on a huge, aggressively gray machine. “It knows.”

According to Nursey, the machine is supposed to distribute cookie dough into even circles, each a little smaller than a hockey puck, which is a mental image that Jack can get behind. 

Their first attempt leaves them with cookie dough pieces that are the size of baseballs. At this, Nursey curses loudly at the machine and gives it a hearty whack on the side for good measure.

“We need Bitty,” Shitty concludes, after their fifth attempt yields even worse results. “Calling for backup!” 

Bitty emerges from the back of the kitchen, where he’d been back there by himself, apparently making a huge batch of peach cobblers. “What’s wrong?”

In lieu of a real answer, Nursey waves one gloved hand at the machine. It is really quite disgustingly gray. It looks almost menacing, but Bitty smiles warmly at it and darts over to examine it.

“What did you do to her?” Bitty asks, looking at Nursey as though Nursey had just personally betrayed him. 

Nursey raises his hands. “I didn’t touch it, dude. Blame Shitty for that one.”

Shitty has the grace to look mildly remorseful. "I can't help it if that damn machine has it out for me."

Bitty rolls his eyes and sets to work, turning the dials this way and that until the machine produces perfect puck-like discs of cookie dough. Shitty mock-applauds, which sets Nursey off laughing again.

“I’m sorry you have to deal with them, Jack,” says Bitty with a joking smile and a wave as he retreats to the back of the room, presumably to resume making cobblers. “They’re really quite hopeless.” 

Jack is, of course, much worse at baking than either Shitty or Nursey, but he appreciates the sentiment. He opens his mouth to say something, but Bitty’s already disappeared.

Georgia seems to only entrust the truly difficult recipes to Bitty, so Jack doesn’t get much of a chance to work with him, although Bitty is always friendly and helpful whenever Jack needs advice. He looks forward to their little interactions every shift and finds himself hoping that Bitty will need help putting covers on the baking racks.

After Jack’s been working at the bakery for three weeks, Georgia assigns Jack to work with Bitty to make Dutch letters. Jack spills a jar of almond extract all over the ground, first thing, and apologizes profusely, but Bitty just laughs.

“Happens to the best of us,” Bitty says, though Jack’s pretty sure that Bitty has never spilled anything in his life.

There’s something about Bitty, Jack thinks, as Bitty leans down to help clean up the spill, that makes everything a little brighter.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, all! This is my second Check, Please! fic and is a little bit of a departure from the Nursey/Dex Martial Arts AU that I just finished, but I've been itching to write something from Jack's POV ever since I started reading the webcomic. 
> 
> A few things:
> 
> 1\. I worked in a bakery for a long time, so this should all be fairly accurate. Cookie machines (idk if they have a more technical name than that but that’s what we all called them) are horrible to operate, corn syrup is gross, and those huge dishwashers are fucking disasters.
> 
> 2\. This fic is kind of a character study of Jack, because I love him dearly. I'm interested in how he would act in a situation that is totally new, like the bakery setting - especially when he's not immediately good at his new job.
> 
> 3\. I'm on tumblr @ pensgame. Hit me up for fic requests or to chat about hockey and OMGCP.


End file.
